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Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Items about banning things

The Gonzales City Council will hold a vote on a proposed "saggy pants" ordinance prohibiting people from showing their underwear in public, after the city attorney reworks the language in the proposal to make it more clear.

The council will vote on the proposal Dec. 10.

Gonzales Mayor Johnnie Berthelot said that he had asked city attorney Ryland Percy to review the proposed ordinance, written by Police Chief Bill Landry.

The American Civil Liberties Union, in a Nov. 14 letter to Gonzales city officials, asking them not to pass the proposal as originally written because it was unconstitutional and "vague and overbroad."

Also, it appears that Massachusettes wants to keep parents from offering their children a spanking. From the Boston Globe...

Parents who spank their kids - even in their own homes - would be slapped by the long arm of the law under an Arlington nurse’s proposal to make Massachusetts the first state in the nation to outlaw corporal punishment.

Kathleen Wolf’s proposed legislation will be debated at a State House hearing tomorrow morning.

If signed into law, parents would be prohibited from forcefully laying a hand on any child under age 18 unless it was to wrest them from danger, lest they be charged with abuse or neglect.

Rep. Jay Kaufman, a Lexington Democrat, submitted the 61-year-old Wolf’s petition at her request, but is not taking a position for or against corporal punishment.

“He does recognize and understand the concern many would have on legislating parental rights,” said Sean Fitzgerald, Kaufman’s chief of staff, “but the problem is the boundary is often overstepped. The right to hit should never be the right to hurt.”